


The Heartbroken Wizard

by The Sign of Tea (NoPlastic)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Magic, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Poly, Wizard Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 11:17:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8748403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoPlastic/pseuds/The%20Sign%20of%20Tea
Summary: No magic trick in the world could protect Master Sherlock from the disaster of falling in love.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [30 Days of Johnlockary](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8424070/chapters/19302805) series, this story turned into a longer fic.

“Apprentice Philip! We’re out of lizard teeth.”

Carefully, the wizard placed the empty glass back on the shelf. His hands, permanently stained from years and years of working with potions and other dubious substances, had been nervous and unsteady lately. He couldn’t afford breaking another one of his valuable utensils. Muttering something between a curse and a steady hands spell, he took a different glass from the shelf, opened its lid and inhaled the scent of dried seaweed. On the other side of the room, his flasks and pots full of colourful liquids were bubbling gently on the simmer.

“I can get some new ones from the market witch tomorrow,” Apprentice Philip panted as he came running in from the front garden. His face was still soot-black from his latest failed experiment. It would take a long time to teach him to create even something as simple as a healing elixir. Sherlock would never understand why the king had insisted on assigning him such a stupid and inept apprentice.

“Forget it.” He sighed. Philip would get the wrong kind of teeth anyway. Last time, he’d mistaken rat eyes for frog spawn. “The seaweed will do, I guess.”

“What are you cooking?” Philip asked.

“Nothing special,” Sherlock said. “Nothing special at all. Just trying to improve the taste of the power and protection potion, so the knights won’t spit it in my face next time.”

“Really?”

The wizard glanced up from his collection of magic ingredients and noticed with concern the unusual doubt on his apprentice’s face.

“Since when is it any of your business what I do?”

“Since I’m your apprentice,” Philip replied.

Sherlock snorted.

“Stop acting as if you understood a single thing about magic, Philip.” He turned up the collar of his cloak and pointed at one of the boiling liquids. “If you really need to know, I’m trying to create an antidote to the love potion.”

“An antidote.”

“Yes, exactly. Just in case someone wants to get rid of… of the feelings the love potion caused them to have.”

 _“Someone?”_ Philip ignored the wizard’s threatening stare and stepped closer. “Are you sure you’re not talking about yourself?”

“Myself? No, of course not. Wizards are immune to potions. What gave you the idea?”

“I think…” Philip began, scratching his singed beard. “I think it happened when the king asked you to make a love potion for the prince. Prince John is the heir to the throne, because the king doesn’t have any other relatives left, and the king wants him to marry Princess Mary. She’s an upstart of impure blood, and she used to fight in battles with the knights. Most people think she has no right to a place in the royal society, but for some reason, the king is convinced she’s a good catch. Prince John didn’t even want to talk to her, and I remember you were specifically asked to brew a potion strong enough to make anyone fall in love with anyone, regardless of who they were or what they thought of themselves. So you arranged a meeting for John and Mary, and poured your strongest love potion over them. And I suppose you forgot to wear your gloves, because you always do - you carry them around even in warm weather, but you constantly forget to put them on when you’re working with dangerous substances.”

“I never thought you could be this observant, Philip.”

“Wait, wait, I wasn’t finished! So you weren’t wearing your gloves, and some of the potion spilled onto your own hands, and it made you fall in love with the princess, too.”

“Nonsense.”

Sherlock laughed theatrically. But once Philip thought he was onto something, it wasn’t easy to distract him.

“Are you afraid your heart is going to break?”

“Apprentice, stop it.” Sherlock held up his hand to interrupt Philip. “I don’t want to hear anything about this story in this house ever again. I don’t know how you managed to make all of that up in your otherwise empty little head, but I assure you, none of it is true. A rumor like that could make me fall into disfavour with King George, and you know what it would mean for you and me if I lost my position at court. Go back outside and collect some more rotten blackberries, you’re going to need them for your studies tonight. Or at least for the calming drink you’ll need to make me after everything has exploded.”

“Gregory.”

“Hm?”

“The king’s name is Gregory,” Philip said as he walked back to the door. On the front step, he turned around once more, not even trying to hide the worry and fear in his eyes.

“Your heart is not really going to break, is it?”

Sherlock shook his head and looked away, biting back tears he hadn’t expected to come.  
After the door fell shut, he sat down in his favourite chair with his knees drawn up. The apprentice was wrong. Things were so much worse.

Sherlock Holmes was the most powerful wizard in the ten kingdoms. The love potion he’d created had been so strong, it could literally make anyone love anyone, and not even wizards were immune to it. It had spilled onto his skin, and under the curse of his own spell, he’d fallen hopelessly in love with both the Prince and the Princess at the same time.  
Acting on these feelings would neither be tolerated under the king’s law, nor in any other kingdom he knew of. And even if it was, which prince or princess in the world would want to love a quirky odd man who spent his days cooking potions and collecting the wings of dead bats? Knowing there wasn’t any chance for his wishes to come true, the wizard’s mind was slowly consumed by despair.  
He could probably create an antidote if he kept working on it, but it was taking too long. All of his work was only a waste of time now.

Sherlock had been invited by the king to Prince John’s wedding. He would watch the prince and his new wife make their vows to each other. He would wish with all his soul that he could be included, that he could make a vow to them, too. He would play his magic violin for their dance in the royal ballroom, and the piece would end with the sound of his heart shattering into a thousand pieces.  
It was common knowledge that all wizards’ hearts were made of glass. It was the reason why they usually kept to themselves and avoided too much contact with other people. If a wizard felt too much pain, his heart could break. He could live hundreds of years without even aging significantly, but if his heart was broken, he died.

There was nothing he could do, Sherlock thought. He’d brought this on himself. His mind was not made to process all these emotions, and he couldn’t cope with the pain. He didn’t think he would survive more than a few days from now. If he hurried up a little, he could still finish his memoirs, instead of wasting his time on the useless antidotes. His most important spells and curses and potion recipes should probably be written down as well. Perhaps even a few instructions for his useless apprentice, though he wasn’t quite sure if Philip could read.  
There was not much time left. He picked up a feather and ink from the table and started to write.  
An hour later, he realized that all he’d put on the paper was a sketch of the bride in her wedding dress.

 

* * *

 

Rotten blackberries had to be collected by daylight to be useful for magic potions. When it got dark outside, Philip put his basket down, and glanced through the window to see if the master seemed in the mood to talk.  
What he saw made Philip hesitate. He stepped closer to the window to see what was going on inside.

Master Sherlock had a large sheet of paper in front of himself and a feather in his hand, but he wasn’t writing. He was painting or drawing frantically, leaning over the table and nearly breaking the feather with the firm motions of his hand.

Eventually, the master stepped back and stared down at his work for a while. There was something in his eyes Philip had never seen before, a dark and unspeakable sadness.  
Anxiously, Philip watched as Sherlock lifted his hands and started to speak. Philip couldn’t read lips, but without a doubt, the wizard was using a spell. A very long and complicated one, as it seemed. When he’d finished speaking, Sherlock turned around and took his magic violin from its case. While he was doing that, the sheet of paper behind his back started to move, crinkling and contorting, and started to glow in a blueish light.

Philip held his breath as the light became stronger, and the shape of a person appeared in the middle of the room.  
It was a woman, or seemed to be - she looked exactly like Princess Mary, but she was a paper figure, a life-sized version of the master’s drawing.  
Moments later, a paper version of Prince John appeared next to her. He smiled at the paper princess and held out his hands. The master had made his drawings come to life.

Philip watched with rapt attention as Sherlock started to play his violin, and the paper figures started to dance. Around and around they went, and they _became_ \- in the half-dark of the room, they began to look human, moving and breathing and real. Sherlock stood and watched them with an adoring smile, the sadness vanished from his eyes. Philip could hear the music faintly through the garden door.

After a while, the wizard stopped playing, and the dancers paused and turned towards him. Princess Mary smiled and held out her hand in an inviting gesture, and after some hesitation, Pince John did the same. Sherlock’s smile became brighter. He put his violin down and stepped towards them, holding out his hands to join their dance.  
But as soon as he touched them, the figures went up in smoke and disappeared. They left behind nothing but fading blue light and the lonely wizard.

It took Philip some time to clear his mind from the vision he’d just witnessed.  
With growing concern, he watched Sherlock turn away and walk off to his bedroom chamber. Philip wanted to go and check on him, but he had no idea how to help a wizard who was so badly affected by one of his own spells.

“Apprentice! You’re forgetting your blackberries!”

Philip turned around to see who was talking to him, and realized with shock and awe that it was Prince John himself who came running into the garden, closely followed by Princess Mary. They were dressed up as ordinary peasants, but their clean faces and hair gave them away.

Philip was so perplexed he forgot to kneel in front of the royalty.

“Could you open the door, please?” the princess asked politely, as if Philip was actually a respectable person. “We need to talk to Master Sherlock. He spilled a potion on us that made us fall in love with each other.”

“Yes,” Philip said plainly. “That was what it was supposed to do.”

“It also made us fall in love with him,” the princess added. She didn’t even seem ashamed to admit it, looking Philip straight in the eyes with an open and honest expression.

At first, Philip wasn’t sure what to say to that, but then he felt a spark of hope. Even if the spell couldn’t be broken, bringing the three lovers together could be the chance to make them all happy again.  
Only if it wasn’t too late, of course.

“What’s wrong?” Prince John asked when he noticed Philip’s expression.

“It might be too late. He’s in love with you, too,” Philip confessed. He remembered the sadness he’d seen in Sherlock’s eyes, and he was suddenly sure all hope was lost.

“Oh, gods,” Mary said, her eyes wide with fear. “That’s not something that should happen to wizards. They can’t handle it.”

“Is he… Do you think it’ll break his heart?” John asked.

All that Philip could do was shrug and go back inside, holding the door open for John and Mary. They followed him to the door of the master’s chamber, and Philip knocked a few times. There was no response.

“Master Sherlock?”

He turned the knob and pushed the door open.  
The master was lying on his bed, covered up to his neck by the duvet. A candle was still burning on the nighstand. He didn’t seem to be sleeping; his eyes were open, but he didn’t move.

“No,” Prince John whispered. He ran up to the bed, took the candle from the nightstand and used it to check the wizard’s eyes. Philip could see from where he stood that there was no pupil reaction.

“Don’t be dead, Sherlock,” John said desperately. “Please.”

“Is he alright, John?” Mary asked softly without any hope in her voice.

John shook his head.

“Sherlock, wake up,” he tried again. He touched the wizard’s shoulder and shook him. Sherlock stayed still, and his eyes kept staring blindly at the ceiling.

In a gesture he’d surely learned in his time at war, John reached down to close Sherlock’s eyes. In a completely different gesture he’d surely not learned at war, he bent down and kissed Sherlock on the lips.

 

“I can tell the nuns of the White Convent,” Philip said after a long silence, fighting back tears. “They’ll come and take his body to the Magic and Creatures Cemetery.”

Mary had been kneeling next to the bed, not quite daring to touch Sherlock. She glanced up at Philip, and her expression changed as she realized that this man she loved wouldn’t even be buried on a respectable graveyard.

“John,” she cried. “Can’t they take him somewhere else at least?”  
But they all knew that was not possible.

“Thank you,” John said to Philip before the two left. His voice was shaking. “I wish I’d had the chance to talk to him at least once. I still love him, I probably always will, even if the potion was a mistake.”

Mary nodded.

“No matter what the king says, we will come to the funeral. That’s the least we can do.”

 

“I just can’t believe it, Master Sherlock,” Philip muttered as soon as he was alone in the room. “How can you be dead? You’re 129 years old, you’ve never even been ill, and you always know a solution to everything. How could you not save yourself?”

He knew it was the shock talking, and of course the wizard’s dead body could give no answer.

In front of the royal couple, Philip had pretended he knew exactly what to do next, but in fact he had no idea. He tried to remember where exactly the White Convent was.

“Somewhere south of town”, he mumbled to himself. “Or was it in the north?”

“It’s in the west, Philip. Behind the temple on the hill,” a hoarse voice said behind him. “It’s written on all the signposts on the market place. I guess this proves you actually can’t read.”

“Master Sherlock!” Philip exclaimed, and nearly fell over himself as he rushed to the bed.

The wizard had opened his eyes again, and now they were reacting normally, focusing on Philip’s face as he pulled the duvet aside.

“Slowly,” Philip warned. He put his arm around Sherlock to support him as he tried to sit up on the bed. Sherlock managed to swing his legs over the edge of the bed, and then he leaned against Philip to rest. He felt warm and alive.

“You live,” Philip whispered, overwhelmed and stunned.

“John kissed me, and he asked me to wake up,” Sherlock explained.

“You heard him!” Philip couldn’t stop grinning.

“Yes, I did,” the wizard said quietly, resting his head against Philip’s shoulder.  
“I think no antidote in the world could make me stop loving John and Mary. Not even death.”

They sat like that for some time, until it got slightly awkward, and Philip decided to get up and make blackberry tea.

 

* * *

 

Nobody at court had ever really seemed to like Master Sherlock, but everyone had loved his magic tricks. People cried when they heard the news about his death of a broken heart, and the flags were hoisted to half-mast. King Gregory threw his hands up in despair.

“How am I going to win the next war without the powers of my wizard?” He shouted, pacing up and down in the throne room. "Find the bastard who is responsible for this. The only just punishment is execution."

"Your Majesty, I'm afraid Master Sherlock himself was responsible for what happened to him," John said, his own voice still shaking from the shock of finding Sherlock dead. "He became a victim of his own powers."

"Wizards are known to be their own worst enemies," the king conceded. "I always thought he had a death wish. What a cruel twist of fate."

 

* * *

 

Apprentice Philip had to disguise himself as a stable boy to get acces to the premises of the king’s family. He was so stunned by the image of Princess Mary riding across the fields on her white horse that he nearly forgot how to talk when she arrived at the stable.

Mary recognized him instantly when he clumsily tried to lead the horse inside. When he told her that the Master had survived, she threw her arms around him and cried on his shoulder.

“Oh, Philip, you have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice saying these words! Thank you so much.”

“H-he told me to ask you if his invitation to the wedding still stands,” Philip stuttered, trying not to blush.

“Of course it does!” Mary said. “He’ll be more than a guest. But let’s not tell anyone else about it until the day comes. Only John needs to know.”

 

* * *

 

The wizard’s life had changed since he’d died. Things had a different quality now, darker, but also more colorful and solid. He felt more like a part of the world now, even a part of society, although most people still avoided his presence as much as he avoided theirs.

On the day of the wedding, he waited until it was dark before he wandered to the palace, enjoying the cold, quiet night air and the stars. There was music to be heard from the ballroom, a cheerful dance to keep the guests entertained. Sherlock walked in through a side entrance. The musicians spotted him first. The orchestra stopped playing, and the guests fell silent.

Sherlock had expected people to be shocked, even scared at the sight of him. As he entered the stage and walked to the front where everyone could see him, he didn’t even notice all the horrified expressions, didn’t hear all the gasps and whispers. He only had eyes for Prince John and Princess Mary, who stood in the middle of the room, holding hands and smiling at him. They looked exactly like he’d imagined them, like the drawing he’d made to give himself hope in his darkest hours.

“Here’s the short version of the story: I’m not dead,” he said to the audience. He’d never talked to so many people at once before.

“You witnessed a wedding today," he continued. Now he did notice that all the guests were staring at him. “No wizard ever got married in all of history; and it won’t happen tonight, either. But I will make a vow to these two people who saved my life. Prince John and Princess Mary, whatever happens, from now on I will always be there for you.”

Sherlock had planned to hold a longer speech, but he was too scared to continue. He felt more confident as a musician, so he took the magic violin that he’d been carrying from its case and started to play.

It was a piece he'd composed to express his love for John and Mary, to tell them everything he couldn’t say with words. It was a little dark, but also full of pride and joy. And instead of paper figures, he could now watch the real couple dancing to his music. He felt like it was the best moment in his long wizard’s life.

Under the spell of the magic music, the guests lost their fear. They came out of their stunned state and applauded the dancers. The orchestra started playing again with a skillful, concerted variation of the piece. Soon, the ballroom was filled with music and cheer as if the celebrations had never been interrupted.

In the end, Sherlock finished playing and let the orchestra take over entirely. He stepped down from the stage, and asked Mary and John to dance with him. They welcomed him into their arms, and kissed him as if the king had allowed it.


End file.
